The Mislaid Lord
by LoquaciousQuark
Summary: Regency AU. To liberate a betrayed northern lord from the treachery of a French prison had seemed fine adventure at the first; now, faced with the reality of the dangerous flight and her charge's stern countenance, the Honourable Miss Hawke finds heroism to be something quite other than she had expected.


**AN:** A prompt from Tumblr. "kayla-bird asked: okay, okay, so (cracks knuckles) fenris, regency-era, in a dove-grey waistcoat wielding a slender rapier, and maybe with a slight dignified limp from the napoleonic wars. this mental image brought to you by… Procrastination. also, roguish hawke who has to marry well to support her sister's tuberculosis treatment. she finds the wealthiest lord in england and stoically seduces him- and then-

"but then, oops, turns out he is a terrible person and has been keeping his young elegant ward, the rightful heir to all the money, a prisoner! in France! because he's SECRETLY A SPY FOR NAPOLEON. BOOO NAPOLEON. BOOO DANARIUS. so now she has to go find the man she married by proxy, sneak him out of a french prison, and get things straightened out in front of parliament. everyone rides horses and uses lots of regency slang. fenhawke: the regency romance novel"

As I have been reading a great deal of Georgette Heyer lately, I could hardly resist. Corrections to the original tumblr post made with thanks to jadesabre301 and knight-of-tuxedo.

 **Summary, in totum:** "She was not accustomed to the various perils of novel-style heroics, but the eldest daughter of the Right Honourable Malcolm Hawke had been often known for her occasionally impolitic mettle. To liberate a betrayed northern lord from the treachery of a French prison had seemed fine adventure at the first; now, faced with the reality of the dangerous flight and her charge's stern countenance, the Honourable Miss Hawke finds heroism to be something quite other than she had expected."

* * *

 **The Mislaid Lord**

—

"For pity's sake, my lord!" she said, greatly exasperated, and the earl at last consented to be handed into the carriage. No alarm had yet been raised, though that signified little until they were clear of the small yard where it backed to the prison's hidden door. His lordship's countenance nevertheless remained stormy, and as her brother leapt to the box and struck the horses forward, Hawke prepared herself to weather his disapprobation over the course of the entire journey.

The opening of the great prison gates for the gentlewoman's carriage, however, stifled any further reply behind tense anticipation, and not until they had been shut of the iron bars for upwards of a quarter-hour did the lost lord of the great Seheron estate permit himself to speak to his companion.

"And thus am I displaced once more," he said, an ironical gleam in his weary eyes. "To what new prison am I so conveyed? Or am I, woman, to wait for it as a surprise? It must be of the new stoney view, if nothing else; I dare not hope your master means to provide any improvement in comfort."

"Prison it may yet be," replied Hawke with a sigh, and she began to replace the pins in her hair without regard for his amazement. "I regret, my lord, to inform you that my brother and I, far from serving the master you believe, have every intention of restoring you to England, and to your home and your title. I know you may have become accustomed to the languishing habits of the foreign French cell, but I pray my lord may find it in his no doubt merciful heart to forgive our necessary impertinences in the execution of such a duty. Such is the burden of family honour, and ancestral name, and so on and so forth."

"This is some trick. You mean to lure me into complacency."

"A dangerous trick if so, my lord, and very little in the complacent way. Feel how the carriage rocks with my brother's haste! Even now my companion who unlocked your door and distracted your guardsmen flies to her ship hidden on the northern coast, to escape persecution by your jailors."

"My gratitude is hard won," he warned. "For what reward have you done all this?"

"Such cynicism! Is justice not reward enough?"

He glanced sharply at her, his hands tightening on his knees, and Hawke instantly regretted the teazing of a man so clearly exhausted by his trials. His dark brow drooped heavily even beyond its natural severity; his color, though brown yet, seemed pale; and his hair, once thick and black, showed the signs of long strain by changing to white at the temples, even though he could not yet be much past thirty years of age. His prison-coat was old and very often mended, and mended poorly, and as he shifted under her scrutiny she felt again the necessity of gentleness, despite the pressure of his irritation.

"My lord Fenris," she said, more graciously, though the civility cost her some effort. "I know I have given you little cause to trust my motives thus far. I know too every reason you might have to doubt me, a stranger who has nothing short of kidnapped you, from those guarding you all these years. This rescue may in fact appear more abduction than restoration. I beg, of course, your patience and indulgence for the hurriedness of all this, but I assure you it has all been done with the best of intentions."

A black eyebrow lifted, and Hawke perceived he understood how little her hot southern blood was accustomed to such polite speech. He did not, however, interrupt, and permitted her the full rein of her explanation.

"Your enemy is my enemy," she continued, and had all the gratification of watching his suspicion replaced by blank astonishment. "I will give you the whole of our history another time, for I can tell by the street we are near the port, but let it suffice to say I have no wish other than for Danarius to be brought as low to the earth as the law might allow, and lower still if Hell will have him. Trust me in this, if nothing else, and I am sure we will get on famously."

He did not reply, though she saw she had his interest, if not his approval. The carriage rocked at the posting around a corner, Carver's anxious hand still too heavy on the bit, and jolted to a stop. "We have booked passage on the last ferry of the evening tide," she said quickly. "I do hope the journey will not be too taxing on your health."

"No ship could tax me as the last three years have done," said the earl bitterly, and then his brow darkened and he said no more.

Hawke, not inclined to encourage such Dionysian agonies, thought of several rejoinders, but pity shielded Fenris from the edge of her tongue while he appeared so ill, and they disembarked from the carriage in silence.

If she had expected the son of an earl to sneer at the feeble lodgings required by their secresy, Hawke found herself pleasantly surprised. Very little effort was required to sneak their vagabond up the back stair to Carver's rented room, allow him the change of his clothes from the filthy prison rags to which he had become accustomed, and present him again at the front door as their traveling companion with all the appearance of gentility. More favorably, Fenris made no comment on the greasy cutlery, nor over the ostentatious deference of their temporary landlord, and if his lip curled at the stains on the unmended tablecloths in the parlor, he let slip no remark of censure. This unexpected civility continued throughout their hurried preparations, and by the time Hawke joined them again for supper, she had all the happy fortune of finding herself most tolerably disposed towards a man who, not three hours prior, had been the most disagreeable _homme enchaîné_ she had ever liberated.

His appearance at the meal gratified her further. Gone was the half-starved prisoner with his burning eyes; at the table with her brother sat a proper, if worn, gentleman of means, and though their provided clothes fit too broadly across his shoulders, she could read the suggestion of their strength still lingering beneath the woolcloth lines. He rose when she approached, and though he did not smile, Hawke perceived he was not displeased to see her. Supper passed swiftly and in relative quiet; while Hawke's temperament precluded her from great solemnity, the occasion of their escape from France, by no means yet certain, provided enough gravity to their conversation she could not bring herself to easy levity.

Despite the urgency of their precarious situation, after supper all went as planned to the very boarding of the ferry. The trunks had been sent ahead with the landlord's boy, a gap-toothed child with a startling whistle, and when the great horn sounded to summon the last passengers to its side, Hawke and her companions stood already in the swiftly falling evening, along the rail overlooking the churning sea. The earl and her brother walked a few steps ahead, for in case the prison had already circulated their descriptions, and Hawke herself lingered within the sparse crowd in her grey traveling pelisse, her nerves steady but every moment aware of their imminent danger.

For many minutes there seemed to be no last threat to all their hopes, and as the passengers began to board ahead of them, Hawke allowed herself to entertain her first hopes of safety. And yet, almost to the exact moment of her burgeoning relief, she spied above the head of her neighbor the grizzled, unkempt beard of the prison's _directeur_ , searching through the French crowd for his quarry.

There was little time to waste. Hastily, she moved through the surrounding passersby with more than one elbow and no by-your-leave at all, until she stood at the earl's side. "We are undone!" she said without preamble, and checked their uneasy looks about with her severe expression. "Erimond is upon us. That martinet! He will have us in Vincennes in moments if we do not take care."

Carver wished immediately to face the man over swords, but Hawke could find little good in this proposal, and was pleased when Fenris agreed with her position, though she did not miss the way his eyes first went eagerly to the rapier at Carver's side. A short conference found them in agreement; they would push on with the rest of the travelers, seeking refuge in bald audacity, and hope Erimond found no cause to close the ferry's boarding altogether. He could not suppose them to have lingered in this port over any other; neither could he suppose them to yet be safely away, and Hawke could not know whether his fear of his superior's reprisal might outweigh his fear of Danarius.

Abruptly an idea struck, and Hawke, though forced to abandon all hope of subtlety upon it, began to withdraw. A hand upon her wrist checked her, however, and she turned in surprise to find not her brother but the Earl of Seheron holding her in place. "My lord," she began, all deprecation, but there was a grave concern in his green eyes that silenced her mockery.

"These risks you take are too profound," he said, his voice low and serious through the evening bustle. "You owe me nothing, and your brother also. Let us part ways here. You do not know the man you trifle with by interfering with me and my house, or the danger you invite with my company."

"Lord Fenris," said she directly, with some sarcasm, and had the satisfaction of seeing that severe countenance flicker with surprise. "Will you permit yourself to be rescued, or not?"

He flinched, though life sparked in his expression, and tightened his grip upon her arm. "Why have you come for me? After all this time?"

"Many reasons. One is that my family's pecuniary circumstance thrust me this spring into Danarius's path, where I found that despite the wealth of his attentions there was something of rot inside his soul. Second, I came upon your sister in Lydes, where she told me in secresy and with great fury that you were _not_ drowned, despite all the years behind your death and the lies circulated to that effect. And third, my lord Fenris, is that I have among other dubious qualities a stubborn heart, and when I find there is a man unjustly imprisoned by foreign hands for three years, I find myself quite unable to sit idly by for the cruelty of his usurper to be noticed by his casual acquaintance."

"Quite true," agreed Carver, "especially as regards the stubbornness."

Fenris did not release her, though his fingers gentled in their grasp, and for some precious moments he studied her face with an intensity that might have unsettled her in any other place. She lifted an impudent eyebrow, amusement warring with her urgency; then all at once the earl's face cleared, and a look of such wholly genuine gratitude flickered across his expression as to astonish her.

"I suspect," said he, very dry, "that regardless of my wishes, you will do precisely as you desire."

"And I desire that you and my brother may board this ship immediately, and leave to me the last part of this act. Pray be so obliging as to defer to a lady's wishes, sir, for otherwise she is liable to get hysterics and act rashly."

Her brother groaned, but Fenris gave a brief smile. "As my rescuer demands," he said quietly, and turned to the porter standing at the ferry's rail.

Hawke wasted no time tarrying behind them, and instead hurried back into the crowd opposite her original direction. Despite the length of their consultation Erimond had gained no ground; still he stood on the low wall opposite the sea, his head turning this way and that over the travelers, his eyes hard and black under heavy, angled brows. Surreptitiously she watched him, waiting until the moment of direst need, lest her impatience doom them all at the very end.

She saw the moment his gaze landed upon his victims, as they reached the front of the line and presented their papers to the ferryman for boarding. His look sharpened and he reached for the whistle around his neck, and the instant he stepped forward into the crowd, Hawke drew in a deep breath, threw back her head, and let out a shrill and piercing scream. Then she promptly swooned to the ground in a dead faint.

The effect was immediate. All attention within a hundred yards re-centered upon her; hands reached instantly to her aid; more than one vial of smelling salts was thrust before her nose, and though her eyes watered vigorously, she bore it all with good will and great affectation of embarrassment. "I beg your pardon," she repeated as she was helped to her feet again, "a thousand times your pardon, gentlemen. Forgive me—a brigand laid his hand upon me, thrust his blackened fingers into my reticule—I am not accustomed to such treatment—my friend stepped away only a moment—forgive me! your pardons, sirs!"

The requested pardons were offered repeatedly, by all manner of concerned gentlemen and ladies surrounding her, and infrequent and careful glimpses through the cluster showed that Erimond stood equally frustrated by the crowd. No onlooker seemed disposed to yield to such a pale, evil face, when such a pretty one lay discomposed in the street, and by the time he at last thrust his way bodily through his obstructions her brother and the earl had vanished onto the safety of the ferry.

There was little left, therefore, but to make good her own escape, and with mincing steps and the fluttering of her handkerchief before her face she accepted the arm of a tall young Englishman with sandy hair in a tail and a worn waistcoat, whose amber eyes rested on her with great concern. He informed her he was a surgeon, and wished with her permission to examine her for injury from the fall, and she permitted his polite solicitude to accompany her all the way across the pier, until she stood at last aboard the ferry, her boarding pass stamped and put safely away again.

Only the slightest persuasion was needed to assure her benefactor she was quite well, and when she spied Carver gesturing from the rail, her new companion permitted her to be released from his company. "Though I pray you will find me if you suffer the slightest head-ache during the journey," he told her, still very anxious, and it was not until she gave the greatest assurances that she would do so he at last left her alone with her brother, with his card, declaring himself Anders of Harley Street, tucked safely into her reticule.

"A pretty diversion," Carver said, grinning, and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Though I wonder what you would have done if he had not been stopped!"

A step sounded behind her and she turned with some alarm, though it faded when she realized it was only the earl, his hat pulled low to his face, his look very bland as he joined her. "I confess, I wondered the same."

"There was no call for worry," Hawke said brightly, and displaced the wrist-buttons of her pelisse just enough to reveal the pearl handle of her dagger, gifted by Isabela at the last shared moment at the prison. "I was prepared for every thing."

Carver let out a great breath, but Fenris only buttoned the band at her wrist again to hide the dagger's hilt with swift, business-like attention. "Fortunate, then, that you were so effective as you hoped."

"My lord Fenris," she said, gently teazing, "I do wonder how much more it will take to convince you, that I am _always_ as effective as I hope!"

He looked as if he might answer, but the sounding of the horn silenced them all, and in a few more minutes they felt the first dip of the ferry beneath their feet as they set out to sea. Hawke could not persuade herself to joy, not yet, but as Calais swiftly diminished in size behind them, slowly disappearing into the dark, she felt her heart begin to lighten as it had not since the first broaching of this rescue to her friends, so many months ago, in the candlelit drawing room of her mother's home.

So lost was she in her reverie that she did not realize for some time that the Earl of Seheron had come to stand by her at the rail, his arms crossed in his borrowed coat. He was not precisely a handsome man, she thought, his aquiline nose too Roman for true English, his brows too heavy for easiness of expression, his full mouth too inclined to frowning. He was not, however, frowning now, his gaze speculative on her profile, and when she lifted her eyes his lips took on the faintest curve of a smile.

She was surprised at how agreeable the expression made him look, but said nothing, and after some moments he spoke with mild astonishment. "I have met you before."

"Yes, sir. Once, several years ago. You came to Elegant's, with your sister. I was with my mother."

"I remember a well-looking woman. Grey hair, with your mouth."

"More precise, perhaps, to say I have _hers_." Still, she was pleased with his memory, and said so. "We danced once, to a gavotte. And then I looked for you, and you were gone."

"My sister mislikes strangers." His eyes fell, then turned, greener, across the rushing, night-dark sea. "Perhaps I should have expected no less."

"Your guardian has engendered no trust of them to me, either."

"My guardian. A man of few virtues, and fewer scruples. I will enjoy seeing him again."

His voice was dark, and Hawke perceived that left unchecked, he would only circle deeper into his own unhappy thoughts. She laughed instead, and smiled at him when he looked, and said, "Well, sir? Has my rescue proved up to mettle? Or have there been too few duels for your refined taste?"

Amusement broke reluctantly upon his sternness, and he smiled in answer. "I imagine I appear ungrateful. If so, I apologize, for nothing could be further from the truth."

"Lord Fenris, with such a man as you have proved to be, I expect the truth to be an intrigue in every respect."

"Lady Amell was your mother," he said at last, with the air of memory returning all at once. "Your father was a baron, of one of the southern counties."

"Until he died, and we returned to my mother's family home in Kirkwall."

"I remember. There was some question of your uncle, if I recall—forgive me."

"Come now," she said, laughing. "You cannot think me so squeamish. How will we ever get on with deposing the burglar of your land and title if we must walk around each other on cat's paws?"

"Miss Hawke," he answered, a grave sort of smile upon his face that bespoke his mood better than his words. "Is there any hope of persuading you to leave this business alone?"

"Never so," she said staunchly, and was pleased to see he did not think the less of her for it. "With the abominable imprisonment you have suffered, you have even greater need of my company than you know. However will you know which lords and ladies may be trusted without my impeccable advice?"

He shook his head. "I would not turn away your aid were you to offer it. But I must warn you, Miss Hawke, that there will be danger if you remain in my company. Danarius is no fool, and he is not a man afraid of violence. You would be safer to have nothing further to do with me."

His eyes rested on hers, and she saw that he spoke from real concern for her well-being. She saw, too, that beneath the firm dissuasion lay a soul desperately lonely, and desperately afraid, and she found that despite his promise of danger she had not the slightest intention of yielding. Her father had taught her courage; her mother had taught her justice, and faced with the test of both before her she found herself more than equal to their challenge. She was not fearless. Neither was she afraid.

"Good heavens, my lord Fenris," she said with great delight, tucking her gloved hand into his elbow, and turning to watch the endless sea roll out before them, froth breaking beneath the rising moon against their ferry, starlit with every possibility. "I expect adventures with you will be very exciting indeed!"


End file.
